US Gen warned superiors about ill
treatment of Iraqis
NEW YORK, MAY 3 (PTI)
As details surface about the alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees by US forces, an
American army general, who oversaw guards at the detention facilities in the
war-ravaged country has said she warned her superiors right from the beginning
about the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners.

The trouble was, she didn't have enough troops or resources to do the job
right, and the men at the top ignored her complaints, Brigadier General Janis
Karpinski told a weekly.

"They just wanted it to go away," she told Newsweek. In the end, several of
her soldiers apparently went out of control.

The CBS News show "60 Minutes II" released snapshots last week of grinning
guards at Abu Ghurayb prison forcing naked prisoners to pose in degrading
positions.

One picture showed a hooded prisoner perched on a box and holding a pair of
wires; if he fell, his captors allegedly told him, he would be electrocuted.

"There's no excuse for what these people did," said Karpinski. "They're just
bad people. But the guys involved in this were new to Abu Ghurayb. It got way
out of hand."

Since the scandal broke, Arab satellite channels have barraged their viewers
with images of the mistreated Iraqis.

President George W. Bush expressed "deep disgust" at the abuse. "That's not
the way we do things in America," he said. "I didn't like it one bit."

Outrage flashed
across the Middle East as TV stations showed graphic images of naked Iraqi
prisoners being humiliated by smiling US military police.

US President George Bush condemned the mistreatment, saying he shared a deep
disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.

The photographs, shown on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera,
included pictures of prisoners naked except for the hoods that covered their
heads. They were first broadcast on Wednesday on CBS television and have led
to charges against six US soldiers.

The Arab TV stations led news bulletins with the photos of hooded prisoners
piled on top of each other in a human pyramid and simulating sex acts, with
their genitals blurred. Two US soldiers standing near the prisoners hammed it
up for the camera.

Meanwhile, an investigation was getting under way today into allegations that
British troops in Iraq beat and abused an Arab detainee.

Pictures published in the Daily Mirror newspaper appear to show soldiers
striking the hooded man with rifle butts, pointing a gun at his head and
urinating on him.

He was reportedly threatened with execution during an eight-hour ordeal after
being picked up for suspected theft in British-administered southern Iraq.

The soldiers told the paper that the unnamed captive, against whom no charges
were brought, was driven away and dumped from the back of a moving vehicle
following his ordeal. It was not known whether he survived.

The Ministry of Defence last night confirmed that, prior to the latest
allegations, British troops had already been investigated over a total of 10
claims of torture and cruelty towards prisoners.

Five inquiries are ongoing, including one in which soldiers of the Queens
Lancashire Regiment have been questioned about the alleged killing of an Iraqi
man.

Responding to the allegations of abuse by US soldiers, President Bush said the
mistreatment of prisoners does not reflect the nature of the American people.
Thats not the way we do things in America. I didnt like it one bit.

But many in the Middle East saw the mistreatment as the latest example of
American disregard for Arabs.

They were ugly images. Is this the way the Americans treat prisoners? asked
Ahmad Taher, 24, a student at Baghdads Mustansiriyah University. Americans
claim that they respect freedom and democracy  but only in their country.

Last month, the US Army announced that six members of the 800th Military
Police Brigade faced court martial for allegedly abusing about 20 prisoners at
Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The charges included dereliction of duty,
cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another person.

US
Brigadier General
Janis Karpinski

Their boss, US Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th
Military Police Brigade, and at least seven others have been suspended from
their duties at Abu Ghraib prison.

In Baghdad, US military spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the
commander of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, Major General
Geoffrey Miller, was being sent to Iraq to take over the coalition detention
facilities.

General Kimmitt said the Army is taking very aggressive steps to minimise
the chances of such acts happening again, and we are also taking a hard look
at interrogation practices.

The photos, taken last year, were inflammatory in an Arab world already angry
at the US occupation of Iraq. Arabs consider public nudity dishonourable.

One of the photos showed a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires
attached to his hands.

CBS reported the prisoner was told that if he fell off the box, he would be
electrocuted, although the wires were not really connected to a power supply.

Bathsheba Crocker, an expert on Iraqi reconstruction at the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the images are likely
to fuel the feeling of anti-American, anti-occupation sentiment among
Iraqis.

She said: It doesnt help a situation in which the United States is already
viewed very badly. From a public relations perspective, it is yet another
image for Arabs to add to pictures of civilians being killed in Fallujah.

Abu Ghraib was the most notorious of former Iraqi President Saddam Husseins
detention centres. Its jailers are alleged to have tortured and killed
thousands of Iraqis.

This will increase the sense of dissatisfaction among Iraqis toward the
Americans, said a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Mahmoud Othman. The
resistance people will try to make use of such painful incidents.

He added: The Saddam era was full of executions and torture, and we want the
new Iraq to be clean of such images.

Any investigation into the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners should include not
only the soldiers involved, but also their superiors, according to the New
York-based Human Rights Watch.

The brazenness with which these soldiers conducted themselves suggests they
felt they had nothing to hide from their superiors, said Kenneth Roth, the
groups executive director.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed what appears to be a clear
determination on the part of the US military to bring those responsible to
justice, spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

Amnesty International warned that the evidence of prisoner abuse will
exacerbate an already fragile situation.

WASHINGTON The U.S. Army, even while struggling to contain the damage over the
abuse of prisoners at an Iraqi prison, said Tuesday that it had begun criminal
investigations into the deaths and assaults of 20 prisoners across Iraq. Two
of the deaths have been classified as homicides.
.
General George Casey Jr., the army vice chief of staff, said 10 more homicide
investigations were under way, and an 11th had been deemed a justifiable
killing of an inmate trying to escape.
.
The photographs that emerged last week of sexual humiliation by gloating U.S.
troops at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, have drawn global recrimination and
furious reactions in the Arab world.
.
There were angry calls from senators of both parties Tuesday for a
higher-level accounting. A senior Republican senator, John McCain of Arizona,
criticized the Pentagon for keeping congressional oversight committees
completely in the dark.
.
Caseys disclosures, made after those congressional complaints, pointed to a
wider pattern of abuse, and will likely prolong one of the most severe public
relations problems to confront the Bush administration.
.
Speaking before Caseys briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denounced
prisoner abuse by U.S. troops as totally unacceptable and un-American, and
said appropriate steps would be taken.
.
He did not respond, however, to legislators calls for him to appear on
Capitol Hill to answer their questions.
.
Rumsfeld, in his first major public response to the reports and photos of
abuse, spoke of six investigations now under way. These were being broadly
cast, he said, to be sure that no systemic problem existed.
.
Inquiries have begun into prisoner treatment not only in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at a naval brig in
Charleston, South Carolina, where two terror suspects who are U.S. citizens
are being held. Rumsfeld insisted that the military system was not
slow-walking its investigation, saying that inquiries were being moved at
a proper pace up the chain of command. The system works, he said. He
struggled to explain why U.S. military and civilian leaders seemed so poorly
prepared to handle the events even though they have been aware of the problems
for months. It clearly is unhelpful in a fundamental way  its harmful,
Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld said he was stunned when he first learned about
incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib, which was the site of torture under Saddam
Hussein. Also Tuesday, Rumsfeld announced a plan to send 47,000 replacement
troops to Iraq, to allow a further delay of the planned reduction in U.S.
troop levels from the current 135,000. U.S. officials have known for weeks
that the inflammatory photos would soon surface; CBS-TV had delayed
broadcasting them after a plea from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Richard Myers. Yet the administrations response has seemed
disjointed, at times contradictory and, some members of Congress said, far too
desultory. The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Tuesday that
President George W. Bush very much wants the Pentagon to take a broad look
at this and take action against those who were responsible for these appalling
acts. Bush has denounced the prisoner abuse, but in a speech in Maumee,
Ohio, he made no reference to it. Congressional anger flared on Tuesday. Tom
Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota and the Senate minority leader, said on the
Senate floor that he felt grave concern about the extraordinary impact
the scandal has had on our efforts to succeed in Iraq. He called on Rumsfeld
to come to Congress by the end of the week to brief lawmakers on this
extraordinary disconnect, this unbelievable failure of communication, of
oversight. McCain said it was really egregious that military oversight
committees in Congress had learned about abuses first from news media reports.
We must have a public hearing with the secretary of defense testifying to
clear up these allegations, said McCain, who sits on the Armed Services
Committee. While McCain is something of a maverick among Republicans, his
experience as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam added gravity to his remarks.
A senior Democratic senator on the Armed Services Committee, Edward Kennedy of
Massachusetts, said that several members wanted a congressional hearing.
This does not appear to be an isolated incident, Kennedy said; the Iraq
charges appeared to be the beginning, really, rather than the end of the
matter. The committee chairman, Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia,
emphasized that abuses had come from only a small fraction of the U.S.
troops in Iraq. We cannot let this single, but tragic, incident tarnish
their service, he said.
.
Rumsfeld had not publicly addressed the matter at any length, but on Monday
his chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, sought to emphasize that the Defense
Department had responded forcefully to reports of abuse. This, he said,
included a top-level review on detention-center operations last fall, long
before reports of sexual humiliation and abuse had created an international
uproar. Di Rita said that the review had been ordered by Lieutenant General
Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq. That review, he said,
drew certain conclusions that were taken into account when Major General
Antonio Taguba began in January to investigate a soldiers allegation of
prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison. The Taguba inquiry produced a
53-page report  which McCain complained had not yet reached key senators,
though it has been extensively discussed in the press  that spoke of abuse by
U.S. military police and possibly others. The New York Times has reported that
the Taguba report described pervasive flaws of leadership, training and morale
of the military police assigned to Abu Ghraib and other locations. These
factors along with generally lax management contributed to problems even after
earlier reports of abuse had been investigated and resulted in punishment. The
report recommended that specialists be sent immediately to train soldiers at
Iraqi prisons in matters of Arab culture, international law, and internment,
interrogation and intelligence-gathering methods and standards. A central
question has been what or who might have brought about such behavior from U.S.
guards who, even if lacking specific training on interrogation methods, would
have received basic instructions making clear that torture and abuse were
illegal and unacceptable.
.
On March 20, criminal charges were filed against six military police officers.
As many as three of them have been referred to military trial, while others
remain under investigation.
.
In addition, seven military police officers have been reprimanded or received
other noncriminal punishment.
.
The military police commander who was responsible for Abu Ghraib and 15 other
prisons, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, told ABC-TV on Monday that the
cellblocks where pictures of abuse were taken were under the direct control of
military intelligence officers. Karpinski has said she was unaware of abuses
at the time. As of Sunday, Myers said he had not read the Taguba report, and
on Monday, Di Rita said that Rumsfeld had yet to read it. Rumsfeld said
Tuesday that he had been aware of the problems as the investigations unfolded.
Now, he said, he had read the reports executive summary.
.
International Herald Tribune WASHINGTON The U.S. Army, even while struggling
to contain the damage over the abuse of prisoners at an Iraqi prison, said
Tuesday that it had begun criminal investigations into the deaths and assaults
of 20 prisoners across Iraq. Two of the deaths have been classified as
homicides.
.
General George Casey Jr., the army vice chief of staff, said 10 more homicide
investigations were under way, and an 11th had been deemed a justifiable
killing of an inmate trying to escape.
.
The photographs that emerged last week of sexual humiliation by gloating U.S.
troops at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, have drawn global recrimination and
furious reactions in the Arab world.
.
There were angry calls from senators of both parties Tuesday for a
higher-level accounting. A senior Republican senator, John McCain of Arizona,
criticized the Pentagon for keeping congressional oversight committees
completely in the dark.
.
Caseys disclosures, made after those congressional complaints, pointed to a
wider pattern of abuse, and will likely prolong one of the most severe public
relations problems to confront the Bush administration.
.
Speaking before Caseys briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denounced
prisoner abuse by U.S. troops as totally unacceptable and un-American, and
said appropriate steps would be taken.
.
He did not respond, however, to legislators calls for him to appear on
Capitol Hill to answer their questions.
.
Rumsfeld, in his first major public response to the reports and photos of
abuse, spoke of six investigations now under way. These were being broadly
cast, he said, to be sure that no systemic problem existed.
.
Inquiries have begun into prisoner treatment not only in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at a naval brig in
Charleston, South Carolina, where two terror suspects who are U.S. citizens
are being held. Rumsfeld insisted that the military system was not
slow-walking its investigation, saying that inquiries were being moved at
a proper pace up the chain of command. The system works, he said. He
struggled to explain why U.S. military and civilian leaders seemed so poorly
prepared to handle the events even though they have been aware of the problems
for months. It clearly is unhelpful in a fundamental way  its harmful,
Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld said he was stunned when he first learned about
incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib, which was the site of torture under Saddam
Hussein. Also Tuesday, Rumsfeld announced a plan to send 47,000 replacement
troops to Iraq, to allow a further delay of the planned reduction in U.S.
troop levels from the current 135,000. U.S. officials have known for weeks
that the inflammatory photos would soon surface; CBS-TV had delayed
broadcasting them after a plea from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Richard Myers. Yet the administrations response has seemed
disjointed, at times contradictory and, some members of Congress said, far too
desultory. The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Tuesday that
President George W. Bush very much wants the Pentagon to take a broad look
at this and take action against those who were responsible for these appalling
acts. Bush has denounced the prisoner abuse, but in a speech in Maumee,
Ohio, he made no reference to it. Congressional anger flared on Tuesday. Tom
Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota and the Senate minority leader, said on the
Senate floor that he felt grave concern about the extraordinary impact
the scandal has had on our efforts to succeed in Iraq. He called on Rumsfeld
to come to Congress by the end of the week to brief lawmakers on this
extraordinary disconnect, this unbelievable failure of communication, of
oversight. McCain said it was really egregious that military oversight
committees in Congress had learned about abuses first from news media reports.
We must have a public hearing with the secretary of defense testifying to
clear up these allegations, said McCain, who sits on the Armed Services
Committee. While McCain is something of a maverick among Republicans, his
experience as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam added gravity to his remarks.
A senior Democratic senator on the Armed Services Committee, Edward Kennedy of
Massachusetts, said that several members wanted a congressional hearing.
This does not appear to be an isolated incident, Kennedy said; the Iraq
charges appeared to be the beginning, really, rather than the end of the
matter. The committee chairman, Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia,
emphasized that abuses had come from only a small fraction of the U.S.
troops in Iraq. We cannot let this single, but tragic, incident tarnish
their service, he said.
.
Rumsfeld had not publicly addressed the matter at any length, but on Monday
his chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, sought to emphasize that the Defense
Department had responded forcefully to reports of abuse. This, he said,
included a top-level review on detention-center operations last fall, long
before reports of sexual humiliation and abuse had created an international
uproar. Di Rita said that the review had been ordered by Lieutenant General
Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq. That review, he said,
drew certain conclusions that were taken into account when Major General
Antonio Taguba began in January to investigate a soldiers allegation of
prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison. The Taguba inquiry produced a
53-page report  which McCain complained had not yet reached key senators,
though it has been extensively discussed in the press  that spoke of abuse by
U.S. military police and possibly others. The New York Times has reported that
the Taguba report described pervasive flaws of leadership, training and morale
of the military police assigned to Abu Ghraib and other locations. These
factors along with generally lax management contributed to problems even after
earlier reports of abuse had been investigated and resulted in punishment. The
report recommended that specialists be sent immediately to train soldiers at
Iraqi prisons in matters of Arab culture, international law, and internment,
interrogation and intelligence-gathering methods and standards. A central
question has been what or who might have brought about such behavior from U.S.
guards who, even if lacking specific training on interrogation methods, would
have received basic instructions making clear that torture and abuse were
illegal and unacceptable.
.
On March 20, criminal charges were filed against six military police officers.
As many as three of them have been referred to military trial, while others
remain under investigation.
.
In addition, seven military police officers have been reprimanded or received
other noncriminal punishment.
.
The military police commander who was responsible for Abu Ghraib and 15 other
prisons, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, told ABC-TV on Monday that the
cellblocks where pictures of abuse were taken were under the direct control of
military intelligence officers. Karpinski has said she was unaware of abuses
at the time. As of Sunday, Myers said he had not read the Taguba report, and
on Monday, Di Rita said that Rumsfeld had yet to read it. Rumsfeld said
Tuesday that he had been aware of the problems as the investigations unfolded.
Now, he said, he had read the reports executive summary.
.
International Herald Tribune WASHINGTON The U.S. Army, even while struggling
to contain the damage over the abuse of prisoners at an Iraqi prison, said
Tuesday that it had begun criminal investigations into the deaths and assaults
of 20 prisoners across Iraq. Two of the deaths have been classified as
homicides.
.
General George Casey Jr., the army vice chief of staff, said 10 more homicide
investigations were under way, and an 11th had been deemed a justifiable
killing of an inmate trying to escape.
.
The photographs that emerged last week of sexual humiliation by gloating U.S.
troops at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, have drawn global recrimination and
furious reactions in the Arab world.
.
There were angry calls from senators of both parties Tuesday for a
higher-level accounting. A senior Republican senator, John McCain of Arizona,
criticized the Pentagon for keeping congressional oversight committees
completely in the dark.
.
Caseys disclosures, made after those congressional complaints, pointed to a
wider pattern of abuse, and will likely prolong one of the most severe public
relations problems to confront the Bush administration.
.
Speaking before Caseys briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denounced
prisoner abuse by U.S. troops as totally unacceptable and un-American, and
said appropriate steps would be taken.
.
He did not respond, however, to legislators calls for him to appear on
Capitol Hill to answer their questions.
.
Rumsfeld, in his first major public response to the reports and photos of
abuse, spoke of six investigations now under way. These were being broadly
cast, he said, to be sure that no systemic problem existed.
.
Inquiries have begun into prisoner treatment not only in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at a naval brig in
Charleston, South Carolina, where two terror suspects who are U.S. citizens
are being held. Rumsfeld insisted that the military system was not
slow-walking its investigation, saying that inquiries were being moved at
a proper pace up the chain of command. The system works, he said. He
struggled to explain why U.S. military and civilian leaders seemed so poorly
prepared to handle the events even though they have been aware of the problems
for months. It clearly is unhelpful in a fundamental way  its harmful,
Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld said he was stunned when he first learned about
incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib, which was the site of torture under Saddam
Hussein. Also Tuesday, Rumsfeld announced a plan to send 47,000 replacement
troops to Iraq, to allow a further delay of the planned reduction in U.S.
troop levels from the current 135,000. U.S. officials have known for weeks
that the inflammatory photos would soon surface; CBS-TV had delayed
broadcasting them after a plea from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Richard Myers. Yet the administrations response has seemed
disjointed, at times contradictory and, some members of Congress said, far too
desultory. The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Tuesday that
President George W. Bush very much wants the Pentagon to take a broad look
at this and take action against those who were responsible for these appalling
acts. Bush has denounced the prisoner abuse, but in a speech in Maumee,
Ohio, he made no reference to it. Congressional anger flared on Tuesday. Tom
Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota and the Senate minority leader, said on the
Senate floor that he felt grave concern about the extraordinary impact
the scandal has had on our efforts to succeed in Iraq. He called on Rumsfeld
to come to Congress by the end of the week to brief lawmakers on this
extraordinary disconnect, this unbelievable failure of communication, of
oversight. McCain said it was really egregious that military oversight
committees in Congress had learned about abuses first from news media reports.
We must have a public hearing with the secretary of defense testifying to
clear up these allegations, said McCain, who sits on the Armed Services
Committee. While McCain is something of a maverick among Republicans, his
experience as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam added gravity to his remarks.
A senior Democratic senator on the Armed Services Committee, Edward Kennedy of
Massachusetts, said that several members wanted a congressional hearing.
This does not appear to be an isolated incident, Kennedy said; the Iraq
charges appeared to be the beginning, really, rather than the end of the
matter. The committee chairman, Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia,
emphasized that abuses had come from only a small fraction of the U.S.
troops in Iraq. We cannot let this single, but tragic, incident tarnish
their service, he said.
.
Rumsfeld had not publicly addressed the matter at any length, but on Monday
his chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, sought to emphasize that the Defense
Department had responded forcefully to reports of abuse. This, he said,
included a top-level review on detention-center operations last fall, long
before reports of sexual humiliation and abuse had created an international
uproar. Di Rita said that the review had been ordered by Lieutenant General
Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq. That review, he said,
drew certain conclusions that were taken into account when Major General
Antonio Taguba began in January to investigate a soldiers allegation of
prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison. The Taguba inquiry produced a
53-page report  which McCain complained had not yet reached key senators,
though it has been extensively discussed in the press  that spoke of abuse by
U.S. military police and possibly others. The New York Times has reported that
the Taguba report described pervasive flaws of leadership, training and morale
of the military police assigned to Abu Ghraib and other locations. These
factors along with generally lax management contributed to problems even after
earlier reports of abuse had been investigated and resulted in punishment. The
report recommended that specialists be sent immediately to train soldiers at
Iraqi prisons in matters of Arab culture, international law, and internment,
interrogation and intelligence-gathering methods and standards. A central
question has been what or who might have brought about such behavior from U.S.
guards who, even if lacking specific training on interrogation methods, would
have received basic instructions making clear that torture and abuse were
illegal and unacceptable.
.
On March 20, criminal charges were filed against six military police officers.
As many as three of them have been referred to military trial, while others
remain under investigation.
.
In addition, seven military police officers have been reprimanded or received
other noncriminal punishment.
.
The military police commander who was responsible for Abu Ghraib and 15 other
prisons, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, told ABC-TV on Monday that the
cellblocks where pictures of abuse were taken were under the direct control of
military intelligence officers. Karpinski has said she was unaware of abuses
at the time. As of Sunday, Myers said he had not read the Taguba report, and
on Monday, Di Rita said that Rumsfeld had yet to read it. Rumsfeld said
Tuesday that he had been aware of the problems as the investigations unfolded.
Now, he said, he had read the reports executive summary.
.International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/518296.html

===================================================

US Brigadier General Janis Karpinski stands before
the gallows of the torture chamber inside the notorious
Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad. Karpinski is among seven
US officers being investigated following claims that
soldiers under their command mistreated Iraqi detainees.
Photo Robert Sullivan/AFP/Getty Images

Chief US
Torturer - Brigadier
General Janis Karpinski

Sadig Abrahim shows signs of "electric
shock torture" on the soles of his feet.
Three pictures in the possession of CBS
News show horrific electrode injuries
on the genitals of three Iraqi POW's.

Prisoner tells of demeaning
abuse
Phillip Coorey
New York
05may04

AN Iraqi prisoner has revealed how he was degraded, beaten and photographed by
US soldiers in a Baghdad prison.

Haydar Sabbar Ali, who has since been released, told CNN he was cursed at and
beaten, and had his clothes cut off with a knife.
"We are Muslims. We don't go naked in front of our families. But there we
were, naked in front of American women and men," he said.

CNN reported the treatment went on for about four hours as punishment for
beating a fellow prisoner suspected of spying for the Americans.

He also said guards "hit you hard in sensitive places, in the kidney, in the
chest, in the throat".

"Our bodies were full of bruises. They didn't let us out of the cells until
all our wounds had healed."

President George W. Bush has told Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to throw
the book at those responsible for abusing Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad's Abu
Ghraimb prison.

"The President wanted to make sure appropriate action was being taken against
those responsible for these shameful, appalling acts," White House spokesman
Scott McClellan said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday the acts were despicable.

"We are there to help, not to hurt. And so the acts of a few, I trust, will
not overwhelm the goodness coming from so many of our soldiers," Mr Powell
said.

Six MPs, all army reservists, have been charged with criminal acts and face
courts-martial. Another six officers who were in supervisory positions have
been issued with reprimands that will effectively end their careers, while a
seventh officer was given a lesser admonishment. There are now five separate
US investigations in to the abuses which involved about 20 prisoners in the
last three months of 2003.

The investigations range from a review of interrogation methods by both US
military personnel and hired civilian contractors, to a CIA probe into the
beating to death of a prisoner and a subsequent cover-up.

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of detention facilities
in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, is believed to be the officer admonished.

She told US network talk shows yesterday the blame should not only rest with
the MPs but people higher up, including General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of
US forces in Iraq.

"I certainly take responsibility for some of this because those soldiers were
assigned to a company under my command. I don't think the blame rests with
me," she said.

She blamed military intelligence and hired civilian contractors.

"I think those MPs were given instructions on what they needed to do and those
instructions started to be very effective," she said.

"I don't know how they allowed these activities to get so out of control but I
do know with absolute confidence that they didn't just wake up one day and
decide to do this."

=====================================================

2004-05-04, International, matamat

Abu Ghraib prisoners speak of
'torture'

Former inmates of the US-occupation run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad
still find it difficult to relate their experiences of torture and
humiliation, as more pictures of abuse come to light.

One of the released detainees who was forced to pose naked in a human
pyramid has told Aljazeera that the acts committed against them were so
horrible that he still could not get himself to speak about most of it.

"They wanted to humiliate us. It was disgusting", said Hashim Muhsin.
"They covered our heads with plastic bags and hit our backs with sharp
objects, which added to our wounds".

"They then took off all our clothes, made us stand next to the wall and
carried out immoral acts that I cannot even talk about", Muhsin continued.
He said "women soldiers took pictures of naked men and did not care".

CIA present Another released prisoner, Haider Sabbar told
Aljazeera that "CIA officials and two Iraqi and Egyptian translators
showed us immoral pictures of the acts that took place" before
interrogating them.

Seven US soldiers have been reprimanded for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners
and six more are under investigation. The reprimands were the first known
punishment meted out to soldiers involved in the mistreatment of prisoners
at Abu Ghraib.
Last week, an American television channel, CBS, broadcast images showing
Iraqis stripped naked, hooded and being tormented by their US captors.
An internal US army report found that Iraqi detainees were subjected to
"sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses", according to The New
Yorker magazine.
Intelligence blamed

Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski who oversaw the prison, claimed she did
not know about the abuse and blamed "military intelligence" for being
behind the abuse.

The ICRC: monitoring Iraq´s prisons
Excerpt:RN: "One of the persons involved in the present controversy,
Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, the former head of the military police in
the prison, has stated that there were efforts by
military intelligence officers to try and prevent the ICRC from visiting a
specific part of the prison, known as cellblock 1A. What did you notice
of such efforts?"http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/irq040504.html

==========================================================

The
night before The Iraqi prisoner's abused photos were released...HBO aired
"STRIP SEARCH" where we see a connection and similar views of the abused
photos and the removal of our Civil Rights through the Patriot Act! Was it a
coincidence or??? Innocent people arrested, bags put on their heads, led to
secluded places, stripped searched etc......

When the Nation Is at Risk, Did You Say Civil Rights?
Wed May 5, 2004 00:46
64.140.159.48

THE ARTS/CULTURAL DESK
TELEVISION REVIEW; When the Nation Is at Risk, Did You Say Civil Rights?
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

''Strip Search,'' an intensely earnest, painfully wrongheaded film on HBO
tonight, tries to sound an alarm about the erosion of civil liberties under
the Patriot Act by likening the detention of a Muslim immigrant in the United
States to that of an American student in China.

The problem is not just that this kind of melodramatic moral equivalency is
silly and specious. (Dissent, terrorism -- what's the difference, really?) The
most tendentious point in ''Strip Search'' is Glenn Close. As a federal
investigator intent on wringing a confession from the Muslim suspect, the
slithering star of ''Fatal Attraction'' is a hundred times more menacing and
scary than any bullying Chinese military interrogator. One glimpse of Ms.
Close in action (''But who am I, just a lowly cog in a rusting wheel,'' she
whispers silkily, ''ignored, unappreciated''), and viewers can only conclude
that even without air-conditioning or habeas corpus, a suspect is much better
off in Communist China.

The crudity of the film's message is surprising given its pedigree -- it was
directed by Sidney Lumet (''Serpico,'' ''The Verdict'') and written by Tom
Fontana, the creator and executive producer of ''Oz,'' the HBO series set in a
prison. In these times there is value to dramatizing the blurred line between
protecting national security and restricting civil rights -- in many foreign
countries, the word Guantánamo, the prison where more than 600 foreign
terrorist suspects are being held without having been charged, has become a
synonym for American injustice.

But as a film, ''Strip Search'' is as heavy-handed and simplistic as a Maoist
textbook. The characters are not given names. The film shifts between two
interrogations, one in a cool, high-tech meeting room in F.B.I. headquarters,
the other in a dank, hot prison basement in Beijing. The conceit is that in
both places, the exact same dialogue takes place. ''I don't know my rights,
you haven't read me my rights,'' the American student, played by Maggie
Gyllenhaal, tells the young Chinese officer (Ken Leung). The Muslim (Bruno
Lastra) says exactly the same thing to Glenn Close, only her disdainful smile
is a little more bloodcurdling.

Neither prisoner has been charged with a crime, and the interrogation seems
open-ended. (There is a moment when Ms. Close is warned by a fellow agent that
she has only 24 hours. But the prisoner does not hear it.)

Both prisoners are expected to give up a friend who is the key suspect, and
both interrogations move from verbal intimidation to sexual humiliation. The
two captives are ordered to strip naked for a ''full cavity'' search. Ms.
Gyllenhaal, stark naked in several scenes, is pitiably vulnerable. But she
cannot match the horror that strikes Mr. Lastra's character when Ms. Close
asks him what will happen ''if I touch you down there.''

A film that could have raised difficult questions and challenged easy
orthodoxies instead confirms the most skeptical view of show business engagé:
movies and political messages rarely mix.

The film ingeniously weaves together cautionary scenarios in which two
graduate students - one a female American in China, the other a male Arab in
New York - are detained without hard evidence and interrogated about
activities which may or may not relate to terrorist plots. The film explores
the plights of these very different people, both of whom are relentlessly
questioned and then strip-searched by a pair of government officials who are
intent on eliciting information to protect the public safety in the face of
the threat of imminent terrorist attack.

In the end, Strip Search explores one of the most important contemporary
questions of the new century: Must security and safety come at the price of
freedom?

IN LIGHT OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN IRAQ RE: POW'S
THIS IS A VERY INTERESTING FILM:
Glenn Close, left, and Maggie Gyllenhaal have roles in "Strip Search" on HBO.

A week after President Bush's visit to Buffalo to trumpet the Patriot Act, the
latest project from Buffalo writer Tom Fontana, "Strip Search" (HBO), addresses the ramifications of that legislation.

Fontana never actually mentions the Patriot Act by name in the film, which
stars Glenn Close as an interrogator and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a detained
graduate student and is directed by legend Sidney Lumet. But it clearly was
inspired by that piece of emergency legislation.

And it just as clearly isn't getting a lot of support from HBO. Conspiracy
theorists may wonder why the pay-cable network has given the film so little
media promotion and why it moved its premiere from a more prestigious Saturday
date to a lower-profile Tuesday date.

The film wasn't mailed to the nation's television critics, as is the network
custom for projects produced by such high-profile filmmakers as Fontana and
Lumet. I had to ask HBO to send it to me.

Fontana was told it was moved because of uncertainties surrounding Saturday's
heavyweight fight. The film also includes some nonsexual, full frontal nudity
during interrogation scenes that may have made HBO leery of airing it as
scheduled at 8 p.m. in the post-Janet Jackson era. Or perhaps HBO doesn't
think now is the diplomatic time to air a film that questions one of the
centerpieces of President Bush's re-election campaign.

To make things even more intriguing, the 88-minute preview initially sent to
me was edited down to a 56-minute version that Fontana delivered to the
network last week to cut down on duplication of dialogue.

The edited version eliminates a sub-plot involving the worried families of an
American graduate student (Gyllenhaal) detained in China under suspicion of
aiding terrorism and an Arab graduate student detained in New York City for
the same reason. It's a smart piece of editing, allowing the film to remain
focused on the message rather than on emotional family members.

The new version also cuts down on the exact duplication of dialogue in both
interrogations, which made the original film seem as repetitive as President
Bush's speeches on the patriotic act. The editing helps the film make its
point without belaboring it.

One suspects the most disturbing aspect of the piece for the government is the
suggestion that our officials would help a foreign government investigate an
American citizen in a reciprocal arrangement aimed at countering terrorism.

The film takes no position on the merits of the Patriot Act, just raising
questions about how much of our rights we are willing to sacrifice in the name
of freedom. The suspects are picked up without having committed a crime. The
use of wiretaps and other intrusions on privacy raise suspicions about them
and their friends. The underlying message is that America doesn't look or act
any different than a repressed society when fundamental rights are sacrificed
in the name of security.

The subtlety of the film's message and its absence of a passionate point of
view make one wonder if HBO's real concern was that it wouldn't appeal to
subscribers more used to seeing less cerebral films and not Playhouse 90-type
films that Lumet was known for making.

In a telephone interview, Fontana said he lost a lot of friends on Sept. 11,
2001, which changed the way the country deals with terrorism.

"We feel we have a moral right to abandon elements of the Bills of Rights,
especially in reference to people who are not citizens of the country," said
Fontana. "My point is other countries have been attacked over the course of
time. When does our moral authority run out? When does simple fear take over,
and when does humanity end? Is it now for all time because we were attacked on
Sept. 11 we can do whatever we want to our own citizens, as well as to anybody
else? That's part of the question this movie brings up."

Though the Patriot Act isn't mentioned in the movie, Fontana said it was the
inspiration and everything in it is about things that exist as a result of it.

"The reason the Patriot Act isn't mentioned is this movie is not about it per
se," said Fontana. "It does not say everything in the Patriot Act is wrong.
What it says is we passed a law immediately after Sept. 11, and we as citizens
were not asked our opinion. But we have not only a right, but a responsibility
as American citizens to defend our civil liberties.

"We may choose, in fact, to give up some of our civil liberties in the name of
safety,'' said Fontana. "I don't know. That's my point. I don't have an answer
as to what I'm even willing to give up. But I want there to be a discussion. I
want us as Americans, if we're going to give up certain elements of our
rights, to do it consciously and not out of fear, but out of strength. I don't
pretend to be anything more than worried, both for our safety and for our
freedoms."

No physical
or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on
prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever.
Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or
exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

**COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any
copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without
profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml